Project description
Tree sensors to prevent falls
Trees and wood poles supporting power lines can fall from old age or strong winds and other disasters or accidents. Whatever the case may be, the result is usually always the same: severe damage to both citizens and the environment. In this context, the EU-funded TreeVoice project will develop a monitoring technology that enables predictive maintenance of green areas. Specifically, the project will make use of connected devices (IoT) and AI in order to provide real-time analysis of trees’ health and detect harmful conditions leading to trees or wooden pole falls. The TreeVoice sensors will be able to identify deviations in the trees’ normal vibration patterns, temperature and other environmental parameters in the wood.
Objective
Treevoice is an ambitious and unique project exploiting IoT, Artificial Intelligence, M2M technologies and Structural Health Monitoring techniques to enable predictive maintenance of green areas and telecommunication infrastructures in urban and extra-urban scenarios, ensuring real time analysis of trees health and detecting harmful conditions leading to trees or wooden pole falls, which are a severe cause of damage to both citizens and the environment. The innovative sensor manufactured by Treevoice S.r.l. is able to sense and identify deviations in the normal vibration patterns, temperature and other environmental parameters in the wood, while the sophisticated machine learning algorithms in the cloud allow to predict and prevent falling events, while also helping reducing direct and indirect costs related to accidents caused by falls and maintenance of green areas and infrastructures in Smart Cities, boosting green growth.
Treevoice S.r.l. has already developed and tested several prototypes of the innovative tree sensor, together with the software infrastructure necessary for data collection and analysis, and aims to perform a sound testing and validation study on a real urban environment. The first on the field extensive experimentation will take place in the municipality of Rome, where the installation of 100 sensors is going to start. The company will develop a detailed technical and business feasibility study during Phase 1, focusing on the industrialization of the system, performing the validation and testing campaign by installing 100 tree sensors, deeper training the machine learning algorithms in the cloud enabling new services, while also consolidating and refining the Business Model, assessing the achievable markets, and profiling and involving customers, investors and key stakeholders.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologycivil engineeringurban engineeringsmart cities
- engineering and technologycivil engineeringstructural engineeringstructural health monitoring
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesforestry
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
00198 ROMA
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.